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Category: Reveal News

  • Take No Prisoners

    It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he picked himself up to find that his best friend had just been killed in the blur of combat. 

    “When you’re actually in it, it’s very chaotic,” Hartzell said. 

    The following day, New Year’s Day 1945, Hartzell batted Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. In the aftermath, American soldiers gunned down dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war in a field, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. 

    “I remember we had been given orders, take no prisoners,” Hartzell said. “When I walked past the field on the left, there were these dead bodies. I knew what they were. I knew they were dead Germans.” News of the massacre reached General George S. Patton, but no investigation followed.

    This week on Reveal, reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway investigates why the soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2018. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison

    When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct.


    Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing  would raise questions from his family and the FBI. 


    Before he died, Rodriguez was promoted to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. His parents and his widow say he had been hoping for the position for a long time. 


    But once inside the unit, the job consumed him. From day one, his fellow officers began to undermine and harass him. Stressed and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. 


    He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden. He didn’t know it would be his last.


    This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside it.


    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2024. Listen to the whole On Our Watch series here.


    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston

    Note: This episode contains descriptions of violence and suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners. 


    In 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 on his car phone to report a shooting. 


    He said he and his wife were leaving a birthing class at a Boston hospital when a man forced him to drive into the mixed-race Mission Hill neighborhood and shot them both. Stuart’s wife, Carol, was seven months pregnant. She would die that night, hours after her son was delivered by cesarean section, and days later, her son would die, too.


    Stuart said he saw the man who did it: a Black man in a tracksuit. 


    Within hours, the killing had the city in a panic, and Boston police were tearing through Mission Hill looking for a suspect.  


    For a whole generation of Black men in Mission Hill who were subjected to frisks and strip searches, this investigation shaped their relationship with police. And it changed the way Boston viewed itself when the story took a dramatic turn and the true killer was revealed.


    This week on Reveal, in partnership with columnist Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe and the Murder in Boston podcast, we bring you the untold story of the Stuart murder: one that exposed truths about race and crime that few White people in power wanted to confront.  


    To hear more of the Boston Globe’s investigation, listen to the 10-part podcast Murder in Boston. The HBO documentary series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is available to stream on Max. 


    This is an update of a show that originally aired in May 2024.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools Part 2

    Chief Red Cloud was a Lakota leader in the late 1800s, when the conflict between the US government and Native Americans was intense, and he was the tribal chief when the Catholic church built a boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Generations of children were traumatized by their experience at the school, whose mission was to strip them of their language and culture.


    Red Cloud’s descendant Dusty Lee Nelson and other members of the community are seeking reparations from the church. “In my heart, in my soul, I feel like the best thing that they can do is to exit the reservation, return all property, and pay us,” Nelson said.


    In the second half of Reveal’s two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), members of the Pine Ridge community put pressure on the Catholic church to share information about the boarding school it ran on the reservation.


    ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, travels to the archives of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. She discovers that many records are redacted or off-limits, but then comes across a diary written by nuns. Buried in the diary entries is information about the school’s finances, the massacre at Wounded Knee, and children who died at the school more than a century ago. 


    This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools Part 1

    In the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one except his wife. 

    “Those are Native children down there…hopefully their spirit was able to travel on to whatever is beyond this world,” Pourier says. In 2022, he urged school officials to search the basement for the graves.

    The hunt for unmarked graves of Native children isn’t happening just at Red Cloud, now called Maȟpíya Lúta. It’s one of more than 400 Indian boarding schools across the country that were part of a program designed by the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man”—those were the actual words of one of the architects of the plan to destroy Native culture. In a historic first this fall, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on behalf of the United States for the country’s past Indian boarding school policies.

    This week on Reveal, in a two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), we expose the painful legacy of boarding schools for Native children with ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe. She’s been writing about these schools for more than two decades. 

    This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory

    As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

    For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

    “He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

    But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week on Reveal, we look at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. We delve into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • From Victim to Suspect

    Nicole Chase was a young mom with a daughter to support when she took a job at a restaurant in Canton, Connecticut. She liked the work and was good at her job. But the place turned out to be more like a frat house than a quaint roadside sandwich spot. And the crude behavior kept escalating—until one day she says her boss went too far. 

    Chase turned to the local police for help, but what happened next further complicated her life. Her quest for justice triggered a legal battle that dragged on for years, eventually reaching the US Supreme Court.

    “This man has caused me to lose so much money that I had to move out of my place,” Chase says. “I went to a doctor, I had to get put on more medicine for my PTSD and my anxiety attacks and all that. My whole life has been flipped upside down.” 

    Reveal reporter Rachel de Leon spent years taking a close look at cases across the country in which people reported sexual assaults to police, only to find themselves investigated. In this hour, we explore one case and hear how police interrogated an alleged perpetrator, an alleged victim, and each other. 

    De Leon’s investigation is also the subject of the documentary Victim/Suspect, streaming on Netflix, which won the 2024 Emmy Award for outstanding documentary research.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2023. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Donald Trump Won the Presidency, Again

    Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris on Tuesday night to become only the second president in US history to win two nonconsecutive terms. (The last one? Grover Cleveland in 1892.) Trump won the presidency following one of the most tumultuous election years in modern US history—one that included an incumbent president pulling out of his  reelection bid, the vice president becoming the Democratic nominee a few short months before Election Day, and two assassination attempts on Trump.


    A majority of voters elected Trump to return to the White House following a campaign often filled with violent rhetoric, misinformation, and disparaging comments about women, immigrants, and people of color. Harris was unable to build a coalition to defeat Trump, losing both the Electoral College and the popular vote after a campaign that initially energized Democrats around the country after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.


    “America has never had a Black woman governor,” says Mother Jones editorial director Jamilah King. “So the fact that America’s never had a Black woman president is not surprising. I don’t think we as a country were quite ready for it.”


    In this Reveal podcast extra, host Al Letson sits down with King, as well as Mother Jones’ David Corn and Ari Berman, to break down how Trump won, why Harris’ campaign faltered, and where the nation goes from here.

    Listen: Red, Black, and Blue (Reveal)


    Read: America Meets Its Judgment Day (Mother Jones)


    Read: Republicans Defeat Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering Initiative With Brazen Anti-Democratic Tactics (Mother Jones)


    Read: Trump Wins the White House in a Political Comeback Rooted in Appeals to Frustrated Voters (Associated Press)

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Remembering a White Supremacist Coup

    In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This did not sit well with White supremacists, who during the election of 1898 used violence to intimidate voters and overthrow the elected government. It’s considered the only successful coup d’etat in US history. 

    The leader of the coup, a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Moore Waddell, gave a speech in which he told White people: “If you see the Negro out voting tomorrow, tell him to stop. If he doesn’t, shoot him down. Shoot him down in his tracks.”

    This week on Reveal, we look back at that coup and its consequences. After the overthrow, North Carolina legislators passed laws segregating White and Black people in housing, trains, schools, libraries, and other public spaces. Those laws were copied in states across the South, sowing the seeds of the Jim Crow era and much of the structural racism that continues today.

    We then go further back in history, to just after the Civil War, when the US government made its famous “40 acres and a mule” promise to formerly enslaved people. Most Americans assume the promise of land was never kept, but over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts of land that once were part of plantations.  

    This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Swing States of Denial

    In 2020, as elections officials counted votes in Phoenix, protesters swarmed outside the Maricopa County election center. Many held flags; some had AR-15s. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was there yelling into a bullhorn, “Burn in hell, Joe Biden.” They claimed the election was stolen. 


    Since then, dozens of court cases across the country have all found no evidence of widespread fraud. Despite that, election workers in Arizona’s Maricopa County and across the country continue to be threatened, harassed, and doxxed.


    “Top election officials throughout the state have been turning over at the rate of a lunch shift at Taco Bell,” said Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder. Richer, a Republican, says he voted for Donald Trump in 2020, but since taking office in 2021, he has spent a lot of his time working to dispel the election lies Trump helped create. And he’s faced ongoing death threats for steadfastly pushing back on those lies. 

     

    This week on Reveal: Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy takes listeners inside the recently fortified election center in Maricopa County, where Richer’s staff are on a mission to demonstrate to voters that the election process is free and fair and deserving of their trust. Murphy joins a public tour, one of at least 150 that have occurred since January 2021.


    Meanwhile in Georgia, new members of the State Election Board try to rewrite the rules to favor Trump. Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman unpacks the battle for control of the election results in the crucial swing state.


    Also on this show, a Reveal exclusive from the archives: an interview with Kamala Harris that has never before been broadcast. Nina Martin sat down with Harris when she was attorney general of California. Their conversation covers an array of topics, from housing to guns—issues that remain central to the presidential election today.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Why You Shouldn’t Buy the Election Narrative About Black Men

    Earlier this month, former President Barack Obama stopped by a Kamala Harris campaign office in Pennsylvania and made headlines by admonishing Black men for being less enthusiastic about supporting her for president compared with the support he received when he ran in 2008.


    “Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Obama said.


    Within days of Obama’s comments, Harris unveiled an “opportunity agenda for Black men” in part to energize and engage this slice of the electorate. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 70 percent of likely Black male voters said they supported Harris, compared with more than 80 percent of Black men who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. 


    So should we believe the polls? Reveal host Al Letson and Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes are skeptical. In this podcast extra, Letson and Hayes discuss whether Democrats should be concerned about Black men defecting from the party, former President Donald Trump’s own plans to win them over, and why they think one of the most Democratic-leaning demographics in the US will likely stay that way. 


    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Red, Black, and Blue

    Every four years, the presidential election brings with it a perennial question about an essential voting bloc: Who will Black voters turn out for? 

    Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes has spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and a new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump. 

    This week on Reveal, we hear from voters at the Republican National Convention, a graduate from a historically Black university whose star is rising on the right after appearing in a viral video hugging Trump at a Chick-fil-A, and a Republican organizing other Black voters to turn out for Vice President Kamala Harris.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Christian Nationalist Has Second Thoughts

    The Reverend Rob Schenck was once one of America’s most powerful and influential evangelical leaders. He routinely lobbied legislators to adopt a Christian conservative agenda. Members of his anti-abortion activist group barricaded the doors and driveways of abortion clinics. He even trained wealthy couples to befriend Supreme Court justices in an attempt to persuade them to render judgments that would please conservative Christians.

    But along the way, Schenck began doubting where the movement was taking him—and the country. His fellow activists seemed more interested in gaining power than advancing the tenets of humility and selflessness he remembers learning about when he first converted to Christianity. By the mid-2010s, he realized that he had been forging a dangerous, divisive path, one that was leading to a new Christian nationalism with Donald Trump as its figurehead.

    “I’m afraid I helped build the ramp that took Trump to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he says. “And that’s a very painful reality for me.”

    Schenck has since left the movement and been ostracized by some of his former fellow activists for his opposition to Trump. In this podcast extra, Schenck sits down with host Al Letson to talk about his conversion into and out of Christian conservatism and what he’s doing today to rein in the very movement he helped to build.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • In God We Vote

    A small church in a small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has been flexing its political muscle and building an outsized reputation for blurring the line between church and state. Pastor Don Lamb wants his congregants to be engaged in spiritual warfare and not be “head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians,” especially when it comes to the local school board. 

    To Lamb, this is not a Christian takeover. Yet his church is influenced by an elusive, hard-to-pin-down movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God. It’s called the New Apostolic Reformation, and it’s nothing like the culture war–fueled Moral Majority of yesteryear. There are prophets and apostles, and a spiritual war is underway, not just in Pennsylvania. To win, the church has to do more than just preach the gospel; it has to get political.

    This week, Reveal’s Najib Aminy and Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler explain what the New Apostolic Reformation is and what happens when it seeps into small-town churches like Lamb’s. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Did the US Cause Its Own Border Crisis?

    The right to asylum has been enshrined in US law since the 1950s. It’s meant to provide a safe haven for people fleeing violence and government persecution. 

    Laura Ascencio Bautista and her family have faced both in Mexico, where her brother Benjamin disappeared along with 42 others in 2014 after police stormed a bus from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.

    In the years since, violence in her home state of Guerrero left Bautista desperate. She heard asylum was created for people like her. So she traveled north, headed for the perceived safety of the United States.

    “I was told that if I went to the US border and told my family’s story and how it’s not safe back home, the United States could protect me,” she said.

    Despite all the political hand-wringing about a crisis at the border, many Americans don’t understand what’s driving so many people from Mexico and other countries to come to the US in the first place. This week, Reveal senior reporter and producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes takes us to a part of Mexico that many families are leaving behind—a place where fear is a part of daily life—and unwinds US policies that helped trigger the cycle of violence and migration that continues to this day. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Black in the Sunshine State

    In the summer of 2023, Reveal host Al Letson felt compelled to return home to Jacksonville, Florida. His best friend had recently passed away following a long battle with cancer, and he wanted to be close to the place where they became men together.

    But when he arrived, he found a city and state he barely recognized. 

    In recent years, the Republican-dominated legislature has passed a slate of laws targeting minority groups. Educators could now face criminal penalties over the material they teach regarding gender and sexuality. Schools across the state have banned books about queer families, transgender youth, and Black history. 

    Many of these legislative changes were part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called “war on woke,” launched ahead of his failed bid for the presidency. This week on Reveal, Letson examines Black life in Florida, following a rare travel advisory by the NAACP stating that “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.” 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2024.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change

    Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was The Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. 

    This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.

    This week on Reveal, we look at the unsettling truth that our retirement savings could be fueling the very climate crisis that threatens our planet. From the site of a massive natural gas pipeline cutting through Appalachia to the boardrooms of Vanguard, we explore how our investments might be working against our values—and what can be done to align them with a sustainable future. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby.

    Pregnant with her fifth child, Susan Horton had a lot of confidence in her parenting abilities. Then she ate a salad from Costco: an “everything” chopped salad kit with poppy seeds. When she went to the hospital to give birth the next day, she tested positive for opiates. Horton told doctors that it must have been the poppy seeds, but she couldn’t convince them it was true. She was reported to child welfare authorities, and a judge removed Horton’s newborn from her care. 

    “They had a singular piece of evidence,” Horton said, “and it was wrong.”

    Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. People taking over-the-counter cold medicine or prescribed medications can test positive for methamphetamine or opiates.

    This week on Reveal, our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate drug test results. Reporter Shoshana Walter digs into the cases of women who were separated from their babies after a pee-in-a-cup drug test triggered a cascade of events they couldn’t control.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies.

    Jade Dass was taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. Scientific studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that taking addiction-treatment medications during pregnancy leads to the best outcomes for both mothers and babies. But after Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety. 


    Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. Why are women like Dass being investigated for using addiction-treatment medications during pregnancy?


    To understand the scope of the dragnet, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy. 

    This week on Reveal, in an episode we first aired in July 2023, we follow Dass as she grapples with losing custody of her baby—and makes one last desperate attempt to keep her family together.

    For more about Dass and other mothers facing investigation for taking medication-assisted treatment, read Walter’s investigation in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2023.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Baby Adopted, A Family Divided

    In 2017, David Leavitt drove to the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana to adopt a baby girl. A few years later, during an interview with a documentary filmmaker, Leavitt, a wealthy Utah politician, told a startling story about how he went about getting physical custody of that child. 


    He describes going to the tribe’s president and offering to use his connections to broker an international sale of the tribe’s buffalo. At the same time, he was asking the president for his blessing to adopt the child.


    That video eventually leaked to a local TV station, and the adoption became the subject of a federal investigation into bribery. To others, the adoption story seemed to run afoul of a federal law meant to protect Native children from being removed from their tribes’ care in favor of non-Native families.  


    This week on Reveal, reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung dig into the story of this complicated and controversial adoption, how it circumvented the mission of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and why some of the baby’s Native family and tribe were left feeling that a child was taken from them. 


    This episode was produced in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The COVID Tracking Project Part 3

    At the height of the pandemic, COVID-19 was talked about as “the great equalizer,” an idea touted by celebrities and politicians from Madonna to then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But that was a myth. 

    Ibram X. Kendi and Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research worked with The COVID Tracking Project to compile national numbers on how COVID-19 affected people of color in the U.S. Their effort, The COVID Racial Data Tracker, showed that people of color died from the disease at around twice the rate of White people.

    The COVID Tracking Project’s volunteer data collection team waited months for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release COVID-19 testing data. But when the CDC finally started publishing the data, it was different from what states were publishing—in some instances, it was off by hundreds of thousands of tests. With no clear answers about why, The COVID Tracking Project’s quest to keep national data flowing every day continued until March 2021. 

    This week on Reveal: We examine the myth of COVID-19 as “the great equalizer,” what went wrong in the CDC’s response to the pandemic, and whether it’s prepared for the next one. 

    This Peabody Award-nominated three-part series is hosted by epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera and reported by Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The COVID Tracking Project Part 2

    In March 2020, health care technologist Amy Gleason had a daunting task ahead of her. She was a new member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s data team, and it was her job to figure out where people were testing positive for COVID-19 across the country, how many were in hospitals, and how many had died from the disease. 


    Gleason was shocked to find that data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wasn’t reflecting the immediate impact of the coronavirus. At the same time, the country was suffering from another huge shortfall: a lack of COVID-19 tests. The task force also faced national shortages of medical supplies like masks and ventilators and lacked basic information about COVID-19 hospitalizations that would help them know where to send supplies. 


    Realizing that the federal government was failing to collect national data, reporters at The Atlantic formed The COVID Tracking Project. Across all 50 states, hundreds of volunteers began gathering crucial information on the number of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. Each day, they compiled the state COVID-19 data in a massive spreadsheet, creating the nation’s most reliable picture of the spread of the deadly disease.  


    This week on Reveal: The second episode of our three-part series asks why there was no good federal data about COVID-19. This Peabody Award-nominated series is hosted by epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera and reported by Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. 


    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2023.  

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The COVID Tracking Project Part 1

    The United States has 4% of the world’s population but more than 16% of COVID-19 deaths. 


    Back in February 2020, reporters Rob Meyer and Alexis Madrigal from The Atlantic were trying to find solid data about the rising pandemic. They published a story that revealed a scary truth: The U.S. didn’t know where COVID-19 was spreading because few tests were available. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also didn’t have public data to tell citizens or federal agencies how many people were infected or where the outbreaks were happening.  


    Their reporting led to a massive volunteer effort by hundreds of people across the country who gathered the data themselves. The COVID Tracking Project became a de facto source of data amid the chaos of COVID-19. With case counts rising quickly, volunteers scrambled to document tests, hospitalizations, and deaths in an effort to show where the virus was and who was dying. 


    This week on Reveal: We investigate the failures by federal agencies that led to over 1 million Americans dying from COVID-19 and what that tells us about the nation’s ability to fight the next pandemic.This Peabody Award-nominated three-part series is hosted by epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera and reported by Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2023.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Churn

    Adam Aurand spent nearly a decade of his life stuck in a loop: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, jails, prison, and the streets in and around Seattle. 


    During that time, he picked up diagnoses of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. He also used opioids and methamphetamine.


    Aurand’s life is an example of what happens to many people who experience psychosis in the U.S.: a perpetual shuffle from one place to the next for visits lasting hours or days or weeks, none of them leading to longer-lasting support.


    This week on Reveal, reporters who made the recent podcast Lost Patients, by KUOW and The Seattle Times, try to answer a question: Why do America’s systems for treating serious mental illness break down in this way? 


    The answer took them from the present-day streets of Seattle to decades into America’s past.


    You can find Lost Patients wherever you get your podcasts:


    NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510377/lost-patients


    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-patients/id1733735613 


    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1avleoc5U4DA7U37GFPzIH 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Hidden Confessions of the Mormon Church

    Chelsea Goodrich and her mother, Lorraine, were locked in discussions with the director of the Mormon church’s risk management division, Paul Rytting. One of Rytting’s jobs is to protect the church from legal liability, including sexual abuse lawsuits.

    The women had come to the meeting with one clear request: Would the church allow a local Idaho bishop who heard Chelsea’s father’s confession of abuse to testify against him at trial? 

    In this week’s episode, produced in collaboration with The Associated Press, secret audio recordings expose a legal playbook used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that keeps evidence of sex abuse out of reach of authorities.

    AP reporters Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen investigate what happened after a former Mormon bishop, John Goodrich, was accused of sexual abuse—and the family pressed Mormon church officials on whether they were going to make decisions that would help Chelsea or her father. 

    Rezendes and Dearen also sit down with guest host Michael Montgomery to discuss a major development in the Goodrich case since this investigation was released last year—and why states across the country continue to exempt clergy from mandatory reporting laws that are meant to protect children from abuse.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in December 2023.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Police Guns End Up in the Hands of Criminals

    When the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department in California wanted to purchase new firearms, it sold its used ones to help cover the cost. The old guns went to a distributor, which then turned around and sold them to the public. One of those guns—a Glock pistol—found its way to Indianapolis. 


    That Glock was involved in the killing of Maria Leslie’s grandson, and the fact that it once belonged to law enforcement makes her loss sting even more. 


    “My grandson was in his own apartment complex. He lived there,” Leslie said. “He should not have been murdered there, especially with a gun that traces back all the way to the California police department’s coffers.”


    Across the nation, it’s common practice for police departments to trade in their old weapons rather than destroy them. Tens of thousands of old cop guns are ending up in the hands of criminals. This week, in a collaboration with The Trace and CBS News, reporter Alain Stephens traces the journey of some of those guns from the police departments that sold them to the crime scenes where they ended up.  


    Then Stephens brings us reporting from The Gun Machine podcast series from WBUR and The Trace. He explores the reasons why police and other law enforcement agencies have greatly expanded their arsenals over recent decades. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • In Bondage to the Law

    On a summer night in 1995, a sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed in a hotel parking lot in Birmingham, Alabama. When investigators arrived at the scene, they found no eyewitnesses and almost no evidence pointing to the shooter. 

    Detectives ultimately zeroed in on a man named Toforest Johnson, who on that same night was with friends at a nightclub miles away. Johnson was tried twice for the murder and eventually convicted on the testimony of an “earwitness” – a woman who claimed to have overheard Johnson confessing to the crime. He has spent more than 25 years on Alabama’s death row.

    In 2019, investigative journalist Beth Shelburne began covering the case, finding details that cast major doubts about Johnson’s guilt. This week, in partnership with Lava for Good and the Earwitness podcast, Shelburne tells us the story of Johnson’s case. 

    Click here to hear the full Earwitness podcast.

    This episode originally aired in November 2023.


    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 3

    The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its 40 acres and a mule promise – and it has continued for decades. 

    Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation, and local governments across the country are finally asking: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how? 

    This week on Reveal, we explore the renewed fight for reparations.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 2

    Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home today to a luxurious community that the mostly White residents consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks and marsh grass alongside golf courses, swimming pools and other amenities. 


    In 1865, the island was a thriving Black community, started by freedmen who were given land by the government under the 40 acres program. They farmed, created a system of government and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story.


    But it wouldn’t last. Within two years, the government took that land back from the freedmen and returned it to the former enslavers. 


    Today, 40 acres in The Landings development are worth at least $20 million. The history of that land is largely absent from day-to-day life. But over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity have unearthed records that prove that dozens of freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts at what’s now The Landings. 


    “You could feel chills to know that they had it and then they just pulled the rug from under them, so to speak,” said Linda Brown, one of the few Black residents at The Landings.


    This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, we also show a descendant her ancestor’s title for a plot of land that is now becoming another exclusive gated community. And we look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 1

    Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land – only to see it returned to their enslavers.

    Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth.

    Bailey built this house on land that was passed down by her great-great-grandfather, Jim Hutchinson, who was enslaved on Edisto before he was freed and became a landowner. 

    “I know this is sacred land here,” Bailey says, “’cause it’s my ancestors and I feel it.” 

    Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Orders, No. 15 – better known as 40 acres and a mule – implied a better life in the waning days of the Civil War. Hutchinson is among the formerly enslaved people who received land through the field orders, which are often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But 40 acres and a mule was more than that. 

    It was real.

    Over a more than two-year investigation, our partners at the Center for Public Integrity have unearthed thousands of records once buried in the National Archives. In them, they found more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who were given land by the federal government through the field orders – and then saw that land taken away. 

    None of the land Bailey lives on today is part of Hutchinson’s 40 acres. Instead, her family’s wealth is built on her ancestor’s determination to get and keep land of his own, after losing what he thought he had gained through the field orders.

    This week on Reveal, with our partners at the Center for Public Integrity, we bring you the first in a three-part series in which we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program. We explore a reparation that wasn’t – and the wealth gap that remains.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.